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What Is a Cloud Service Broker
=What Is a Cloud Service Broker= Gartner believes that Cloud Service Brokers (CSB’s) are one of the most necessary and attainable opportunities for service providers, distributors and enterprise IT organizations. CSB’s will broker relationships between a service consumer and multiple cloud providers. "The future of cloud computing will be permeated with the notion of brokers negotiating relationships between providers of cloud services and the service customers. In this context, a broker might be software, appliances, platforms or suites of technologies that enhance the base services available through the cloud. Enhancements will include managing access to these services, providing greater security or even creating completely new services." (Source: Gartner: "Cloud Consumers Need Brokerages to Unlock the Potential of Cloud Services") The CSB model provides an architectural, business and IT operations model for enabling, delivering and managing different cloud services within a federated and consistent provisioning, billing, security, administration and support framework. For enterprises, this model will enable them to unify cloud services management so they can speed up innovation, collaborate on a global scale, reduce operational costs and grow their bottom line. For service providers, it will enable them to unify the delivery of cloud services and differentiate their networks as a true cloud computing platform. And for technology providers, it provides an opportunity to provide value-added service ecosystems that help differentiate their core offerings to gain market share, increase customer life-time profitability and enable new channels of distribution. =What is a Cloud Computing Reference Architecture and The Actors= A cloud computing reference architecture is a generic high-level conceptual model thatis a powerful tool for discussing the requirements, structures, and operations of cloud computing. The model is not tied to any specific vendor products, services, or reference implementation, nor does it define prescriptive solutions that inhibit innovation. It defines a set of actors, activities, and functions that can be used in the process of developing cloud computing architectures, and relates to a companion cloud computing taxonomy. It contains a set of views and descriptions that are the basis for discussing the characteristics, uses and standards for cloud computing. A cloud computing reference architecture focuses on the requirements of what cloud service provides, not ''on a design that defines a solution and its implementation. It is intended to facilitate the understanding of the operational intricacies in cloud computing. The reference architecture does not represent the system architecture of a specific cloud computing system; instead, it is a tool for describing, discussing, and developing the system-specific architecture using a common framework of reference. A cloud computing reference architecture defines five major ''actors: cloud consumer, cloud provider, cloud auditor, cloud broker, ''and ''cloud carrier. Each actor is an entity (a person or an organization) that participates in a transaction or process and/or performs tasks in cloud computing. The table below briefly lists the five major actors defined in a cloud computing reference architecture. Figure 1 – Cloud Computing Reference Architecture Figure 2 – Cloud Computing Reference Architecture Actors and their Roles Figure 3 - Interactions between the Actors in Cloud Computing Cloud Consumer The cloud consumer is the ultimate stakeholder that the cloud computing service is created to support. A cloud consumer represents a person or organization that maintains a business relationship with, and uses the service from, a cloud provider. A cloud consumer browses the service catalog from a cloud provider, requests the appropriate service, sets up service contracts with the cloud provider, and uses the service. The cloud consumer may be billed for the service provisioned, and needs to arrange payments accordingly. Cloud Provider A cloud provider can be a person, an organization, or an entity responsible for making a service available to cloud consumers. A cloud provider builds the requested software/platform/ infrastructure services, manages the technical infrastructure required for providing the services, provisions the services at agreed-upon service levels, and protects the security and privacy of the services. Cloud providers undertake different tasks for the provisioning of the various service models. Cloud Auditor A cloud auditor is a party that can conduct independent assessment of cloud services, information system operations, performance, and security of a cloud implementation. A cloud auditor can evaluate the services provided by a cloud provider in terms of security controls, privacy impact, performance, etc. Cloud Carrier A cloud carrier acts as an intermediary that provides connectivity and transport of cloud services between cloud consumers and cloud providers. Cloud carriers provide access to consumers through network, telecommunication, and other access devices. For example, cloud consumers can obtain cloud services through network access devices, such as computers, laptops, mobile phones, mobile IInternet devices (MIDs), etc. The distribution of cloud services is normally provided by network and telecommunication carriers or a transport agent, where a transport agent refers to a business organization that provides physical transport of storage media such as high-capacity hard drives. Note that a cloud provider will set up service level agreements (SLAs) with a cloud carrier to provide services consistent with the level of SLAs offered to cloud consumers, and may require the cloud carrier to provide dedicated and encrypted connections between cloud consumers and cloud providers. Cloud Broker As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services can be too complex for cloud consumers to manage. A cloud consumer may request cloud services from a cloud broker, instead of contacting a cloud provider directly. A cloud broker is an entity that manages the use, performance, and delivery of cloud services and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. In general, a cloud broker can provide services in three categories: *''Service Intermediation'': A cloud broker enhances a given service by improving some specific capability and providing value-added services to cloud consumers. The improvement can be managing access to cloud services, identity management, performance reporting, enhanced security, etc. *''Service Aggregation'': A cloud broker combines and integrates multiple services into one or more new services. The broker provides data integration and ensures the secure data movement between the cloud consumer and multiple cloud providers. *''Service Arbitrage'': Service arbitrage is similar to service aggregation except that the services being aggregated are not fixed. Service arbitrage means a broker has the flexibility to choose services from multiple agencies. The cloud broker, for example, can use a credit-scoring service to measure and select an agency with the best score. =A Deeper Look at Cloud Service Brokers= The CSB is an entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between Cloud Providers and Cloud Consumers. · A CSB offers intermediation, monitoring, transformation/portability, governance, provisioning, and integration services and negotiates relationships between various cloud providers and consumers. The CSB will emerge as an important component in the overall cloud ecosystem. · A broker has no cloud resources of its own, but matches consumers and providers based on the SLA required by the consumer. The consumer has no knowledge that the broker does not control the resources. · A CSB can provide brokering service for different Cloud Service Providers (CSP) based on private clouds, community clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds. · CSB's offer intermediation, proxy, monitoring, transformation, portability, governance, provisioning, screening, substitution, security, composition of services and negotiate relationships between various CSP's and Cloud Service Consumers (CSC’s). CSC's can be any web services, applications and devices such as part of M2M, users (e.g. enterprise users or public consume users), even another cloud. A cloud can through CSB to inter-working with other clouds. · A CSB will have the ability to from alliances with different clouds, the CSB integrates and composes cloud services by orchestrating the cloud resources and services across various cloud domains and Cloud Service Providers, and offers guaranteed cloud services to consumers with SLA. In the cloud ecosystem, Cloud consumers can through a CSB access the cloud computing services and resources of Cloud Service Providers. When a CSB receives a cloud service consumer request(s), it will select the appropriate cloud computing service(s) and resource(s) furnished by the Cloud Service Provider(s) and execute the cloud operations such as intermediation, proxy, monitoring, transformation/portability, governance, provisioning, screening, substitution, security, and the composition of services. A CSB will invoke and adapt to cloud services and resources from various Cloud Service Providers, and return consumer response.